Scenarios

Scenario 1: Check for updates

Click/decision count

Can reduce to 5 once a license has been accepted/remembered (vs. 12 with UM automatic mirror selection)

Scenario 2: What add-ons can I get?

Help >

Software Updates...

select Available Software page

expand each site, then categories, and checkmark desired items

OR view by categories, expand categories, and checkmark desired items

OR view by name, checkmark desired items

OR filter by name from any view

Install...

Progress dialog followed by Install dialog

Scenario continues similar to update completion

Click/decision count

3 clicks/decisions to get to browsing mode (vs. 7 for UM)

alternate ways to find content (UM by site only)

ability to find by name

once items are selected for install, 3 clicks to finish (Next, I accept..., Finish) as in update scenario. One click if license was previously accepted. (UM is 4 clicks)

Scenario 3: Found something cool on the web

Setup: User finds software with an update site reference on the web

Help >

Software Updates...

select Available Software page

drag URL from browser to list (this adds the site and expands it)

Click/decision count

4 clicks/decisions to get new content shown in UI (vs. 14 for UM)

once items are selected for install, 3 clicks to finish (Next, I accept..., Finish) as in update scenario. One click if license was previously accepted. (UM is 4 clicks)

Scenario 4: What do I have?

Help >

Software Updates...

select Installed Software page

Click/decision count

3 clicks/decisions to see high level of what user installed (vs. 4 for UM)

No way to get more detail (UM provides drill-down detail)

No link from installed view to more detailed Help > About information

Detailed feature view of what's installed

Help >

About Eclipse SDK

Feature Details

Detailed plug-in view of what's installed

Help >

About Eclipse SDK

Plug-in Details

Scenario 5: Automatic Updating

Like Update Manager, p2 defines preferences for the user to set up automatic update scheduling on every startup of Eclipse, or at daily or weekly scheduled times. Users can also set a preference so that updates are automatically downloaded before the user is ever notified that updates have been found. In addition, users can set reminder options so that they can ignore update notifications and be reminded later.

Setup: User is working and updates have been discovered and/or downloaded

Popup notifies user of available updates. User can keep working.

User can click on the popup to review the updates when ready. This will result in the update dialog shown in Scenario #1

User can ignore popup until ready to deal with it

User can dismiss popup and retrieve the update list again by clicking on the update affordance in the status bar

Click/decision count

Work is not interrupted, user can ignore updates until ready or dismiss popup until ready

After clicking on popup, 3 clicks (or 1 if license has previously been accepted) to install the updates (vs. 7 for UM)

If popup is dismissed, 4 clicks (or 2 if license has previously been accepted) to reactivate and complete update dialog (vs. 14 clicks/decisions to manually recheck for updates with UM)

Scenario 6: What's wrong with my configuration?

Scenario 7: What sites am I using

Problems

Implementation has same performance problems as UM did (user may have to wait a long time for content to fill in or for resolution to take place).

Original modeless ("dashboard") design forced modal due to implementation problems with progress reporting, keyboard handling, inconsistency with rest of Eclipse

Too much repo management forced on user

We haven't improved error reporting (some find it worse) - need to decipher resolution errors and report in user-friendly way

We removed detail about software requirements/underlying libraries. Some users want to know. Inconsistencies remain due to late-breaking issues (need to show licenses for all things even though user doesn't see those things anywhere else).